Like almost every other institution in this country, Australian sport has been captured by carbon; succumbing to the interests of multinational corporations at the centre of the climate crises.
Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting completed the coup by announcing a multi-year sponsorship deal with the Australian Olympic Committee.
It’s quite spectacular for the AOC, a United Nations’ Sports for Climate Action Framework signatory and Reconciliation Action Plan holder, to partner with an industry whose material wealth appears both founded and reliant on the destruction of First Nations communities and cultures.
It’s even more galling considering Rinehart is the benefactor of her father, Lang Hancock, who famously proposed “herding Aboriginal people into one area before doping up the water so they were sterile and eventually breed themselves out”.
Of course, none of this matters to institutions whose sustainability and reconciliation action plans are created to be wielded as nothing more than a marketing tool; the default position for corporate Australia.
But there was a sliver of light in Australian sport when Tennis Australia confirmed the axing of Santos from the 2021 Australian Open sponsors list.
Although the AFL dropped Rio Tinto in 2020 for destroying the 46,000-year-old Juukan caves, this is the first time that a peak sporting body has presumably dumped a partner on the specific grounds of climate – clearing the path for others to follow suit; and herein lies the opportunity for the first follower.
The power of the first follower is notoriously understated. An unsung hero that is routinely overlooked, the first follower exhibits arguably more courage than the leader whose initial step took the tally from zero to one.
It’s the first follower who normalises and validates the actions of those they are following, providing safe passage for the fence sitters whose strength depends on the quantity of those around them and the direction they are moving.
Without the forward momentum that the first follower brings, moments don’t evolve into movements; and that’s the tantalising opportunity that Tennis Australia has provided for athletes, fans and administrators.
By rectifying their initial failure and parting ways with Santos, Tennis Australia is the flint and the first follower – whether that be the Australian Olympic Committee, AFL, Cricket Australia, Netball Australia, Swimming Australia, Rugby Australia or the plethora of clubs under their codes banners that have been captured by carbon – to be the spark.
In a transitional and overlapping phase of the sporting calendar, it’s an opportune moment for athletes to reject the generations of Australian pacifism that has enabled the governing bodies to commodify them.
It’s a chance to pull back the curtains and dismantle the stage that has seen athletes blindly championing the vested interests of corporations and wealthy individuals like mannequins in a shop window.
The recent Cool Down campaign, led by Emma and David Pocock from FrontRunners, has signalled that athletes are starting to rise from their slumber. The campaign acknowledges the threat that climate change poses to the future of sport and impressively garnered signatures from more than 300 athletes, calling upon governments to be more ambitious with their climate commitments.
But the legitimacy, agency and integrity of these pledges will be undermined for as long as the athletes and their employers champion the causes of companies such as Santos, Hancock Prospecting, BHP, Woodside, Origin Energy and the like.
As much as the general public want to rally behind athletes such as Pat Cummins, a signatory of the Cool Down campaign, it’s hard to unsee the fact that he and his peers have spent another summer promoting Alinta Energy; a convenient yarn that almost makes you forget that they pump around 11.7M tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere per year.
Tennis Australia has begun squiggling “the line” that major institutions are so afraid to draw. In doing so, they have begun laying down safeguards for the sports future, setting a precedent for others to follow and excitingly exposed themselves to a whole new market of potential investors.
Now we await with anticipation to see who, if anyone, will courageously be the first to follow.
Ben Abbatangelo is a Gunaikurnai and Wotjobaluk virtuoso executive leader, freelance writer and storyteller. He is a former Melbourne Stars cricketer and the former deputy CEO of AIME
